One winter’s night, and drunk again, James Dow realised there was a real risk that his relationship with alcohol could take him to a dark place. With the festive season approaching, when the drink flows more freely than ever, he Googled “alcoholism and Christmas” – and one of the things he came across was Crisis at Christmas, the initiative that offers people who are homeless a place to spend the holiday season.
“I knew straightaway that I wanted to volunteer,” he says. “Often volunteers joke that they’re helping because there’s nothing on TV. But for me, the truth was, and I think it’s true for a lot of volunteers, that I had come close to homelessness, knew how life could be, and didn’t want somebody else to be in that situation.”
Today, more than 20 years later, 68-year-old Dow still takes leave from his job as an IT developer to volunteer at Christmas. “When I first started I never expected to be doing it all these years later. I feel like I’m making a difference,” he says.
Like Dow, IT manager Simon Mullane’s decision to volunteer for Crisis wasn’t initially an entirely selfless act. Ten years ago, he was looking for a distraction at Christmas after a long-term relationship ended. “I needed a bit of space and didn’t want to sit in front of the TV eating,” he says.
He looked for volunteering opportunities and realised that his IT skills would be put to good use at Crisis. “That first year, I ended up running the internet cafe for guests, and last year I helped set up pop-up IT networks at different Crisis centres, which was an epic project,” says the 50-year-old.
Mullane and Dow are just two of the 1,860 people who gave up time at Christmas in 2021 to volunteer for Crisis at one of its centres or hotels. Volunteers come from diverse backgrounds – and they include former guests who are no longer experiencing homelessness and Crisis members gaining experience after completing the Crisis retail training programme (a 12-week opportunity to develop skills in retail and customer service at one of Crisis’s London charity shops).
But whatever their background, volunteers share the same ambition: to help make a difference to somebody’s life. “You’ll find doctors, cleaners, lawyers, and we all volunteer together. I often see former guests, who have found work and return as volunteers,” says Norm Reeve, 40, who has spent the past 13 Christmases volunteering. “We are all just people who want to do something good over Christmas and give something back.”
Reeve, a TV production manager, says volunteering levels him. “I love my job but it’s a very different world, and can be quite superficial. I can’t volunteer at other times of the year because of my work schedule. But for those two weeks I feel I can give up my time – which I think at Christmas is more valuable than money – and do something really worthwhile.”
Reeve is a key volunteer with responsibility for helping run a Crisis centre alongside the volunteer team leader. “I can be doing anything from helping to look after the food service to managing the door, or talking to guests. Many people don’t give those who are homeless the time of day, but here you can spend an hour chatting or listening to guests.”
Sometimes those conversations between a volunteer and a guest can be life-changing. Last Christmas, Maggie Heraty was a volunteer call handler for one of the Crisis phone lines. “It was a cross between a befriending and an advice line, and I could do it from home,” she says.
One call in particular stands out for Heraty, 77, who first volunteered for Crisis 13 years ago after retiring from her job in logistics at the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. “It was from a man who had been born in Eritrea, and it turned out that I actually knew his birth place. I think this helped him feel he could open up to me,” she says.
“I learned how he had lost his wife and his job. After our call, I was able to refer him on so he could get specialist advice. And as a result he had somewhere to move on to from the Crisis hotel after Christmas.
“I was so happy. That is the lovely thing about the work at Christmas, helping to change lives. Just that one man and helping to get him housed, I had such a buzz for a month afterwards and talked about nothing else to my friends.”
Volunteers such as Heraty are the lifeblood of Crisis at Christmas, according to its resources manager Alice Midgley. “Our thousands of volunteers make all the difference. They treat guests as the equals they are. Guests know that they care so much as they have chosen to spend their Christmas with them,” she says.
“You see people who are homeless change when they come to Crisis at Christmas, and that’s down to two things. First, it’s the people – friendly volunteers to chat to, and advice workers to help you plan your future. And second, having safe and secure accommodation is transformative.
“We’re lucky to have many volunteers as our work would be completely impossible without them.”
If you’d like to help end homelessness by volunteering at one of our Christmas Centres up and down the country, visit crisis.org.uk/guardianvolunteer
